Javier Bardem: As a cold killer in the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men, Bardem places himself on to the Mt. Rushmore of badasses

Cate Blanchett: Few actresses could move as easily between the roles of Bob Dylan in I'm Not There and Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Abbie Cornish: As the secret wife of Sir Walter Raleigh in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, she more than shares the screen with Clive Owen and Cate Blanchett

Marion Cotillard: Seemed to become Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose

David Cronenberg: Brings his signature edge to human sex trafficking intrigue in Eastern Promises

Russell Crowe: Compare the lethal force Crowe personified in L.A. Confidential with his worn, bureaucratised but dogged police investigator in American Gangster

Daniel Day-Lewis: the Londoner will receive plenty of kudos chatter for his role in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood

Roger Deakins: British cinematographer could get awards for No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James or In the Valley of Elah

Alexandre Desplat: his relative obscurity faded last year when the Paris native's witty soundtrack to The Queen nabbed an Oscar nomination. Now could be picked for Lust, Caution

Jacqueline Durran: British costume designer created for Atonement iconic fashion statements audiences would not soon forget

Dante Ferretti: Italian art director who has stretched himself once again, designing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Marc Forster: German-born Forster carries the weight of bringing one of the decade's most popular novels to the big screen with December's release, The Kite Runner, set in 1970s Kabul, Afghanistan

Charlotte Gainsbourg: in I'm Not There, the Dylan biopic, the French actress grabs our sympathy immediately

Craig Gillespie: Sydney-born film-maker has impressed with Lars and the Real Girl, a sweetly comedic tale

Eric Gautier: courting Oscar accolades with his man-for-all-seasons presentation of Into the Wild.

Paul Greengrass: British director of The Bourne Ultimatum, a blockbuster that makes you think

Glen Hansard: lead singer of Irish band The Frames gives a winning onscreen performance in Once

Ronald Harwood: one of the go-to scribes for literary adaptations this year weighs in with two screenplays: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Love in the Time of Cholera

Irrfan Khan: Indian actor has proved he can be the heart of an epic drama (The Namesake), act without dialogue (The Darjeeling Limited) and even steal scenes from Angelina Jolie (A Mighty Heart).

Janusz Kaminski: Steven Spielberg's cinematographer of choice could now be picked for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which allows him to experiment with unconventional techniques

Keira Knightley: Atonement puts her in line for her second Oscar and Golden Globe acting noms in the past three years, following 2005's Pride & Prejudice

Sarah Polley: Toronto-born actress whose feature writing-directing debut Away From Her establishes her as a legitimate triple threat

Olivier Raoux: French production designer whose work on La Vie en Rose paints scenes with subtle accuracy, enabling viewers to focus on story

Sam Riley: as the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, he manages to sidestep the music biopic cliches

Marjane Satrapi: Drawn from her bestselling graphic novel series, Persepolis tells the hard yet often humorous story of the author's experience as a young woman living in post-Islamic Revolution Iran

Aradhana Seth: as art director and set decorator for The Darjeeling Limited has pushed Wes Anderson's patented brand of designer whimsy into overdrive

Tilda Swinton: her performance carves another notch in her long history of iconoclastic roles

Tang Wei: Chinese actress who had never actred in a feature nor known the work of Ang Lee before she auditioned for Lust, Caution. Carries the film on her shoulders

Tom Wilkinson: It would be impossible for the British actor not to get awards consideration for conveying Arthur's joy at rebelling against the morally bankrupt legal cocoon that has enveloped him in Michael Clayton

Michael Winterbottom: British director's story of Daniel Pearl, the murdered journalist, makes the heartbreak feel all too real

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